Thursday, February 19, 2015

Lots of buzz in state government about Sen. Eddie Joe Williams' proposal to reorganize state government into 10 principal departments.

Many efficiencies are promised, as they usually are when government reorganization is kicked around. Not much discussion about it yet, though it's presumed it has at least some approval from the man who'd be at the top of these cabinet-style departments, Gov. Asa Hutchinson.

One note: the 10 would include a Department of Homeland Security, just like the U.S. government.

Good job for Jason Rapert, I'd say, to head this agency. He's the man we want in charge of our arsenal of bunker busters.

More seriously, since George W. Bush invented Homeland Security, there's been much discussion about the word, not used by previous presidents. Many have objected that "homeland" smacks off the motherland, Russia, and the fatherland, Germany. Critics say it connotes a shared place of birth, race, language and ethnicity. Sort of nativist phraseology. Security, too, strikes me as problematic. It also connotes threats from without. As yet, we seem to be perfectly capable of generating most of the damage to our well-being within our borders.

That screenshot at the top, taken from Russian television, refers to a government report that said in 2013 that the government was unable to define what "homeland security" meant, despite spending zillions on it. You think that might encourage little ol' Arkansas not to take on airs?

Arkansas tried Department of Public Safety once. That was a better terminology, seems to me. And have we really accomplished anything by putting State Police, emergency services, the fire marshal and sundry others under a Homeland Security chief? Oh, hell, let's call him a czar while we're at it.

More by Max Brantley

Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen has written a letter to the Administrative Office of the Courts objecting to what his staff said were derogatory references to Black Lives Matter by the leader of a session on court security.

ACLU chapters in Oklahoma and Arkansas have joined the review of an Oklahoma agency that has put drug court defendants to work at poultry companies in conditions described in an investigative report as virtual slave labor.

Circuit Judge Doug Martin of Fayetteville has issued a formal order that quashes a state effort to block requests for information and sworn testimony from legislators and other state officials about the motivation behind the state law that prohibits cities from enacting local ordinances that extend civil rights protection to gay people.

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State Auditor Andrea Lea, who began her tenure in statewide office with a degree of competence unseen in some other Republican counterparts (think Treasurer Dennis Milligan particularly), is becoming more deeply mired in a political scandal.

Little Rock police have identified two women found dead of gunshot wounds in an SUV parked next to a vacant trailer in a mobile home park at 11500 Chicot Road.

Great piece in Washington Post on the budget crisis in Louisiana. Big tax cuts and corporate welfare will do that to a state, particularly to a state whose previous governor, Republican Bobby Jindal, refused to join the Obamacare-funded Medicaid expansion. There's a lesson there for Arkansas.

State Rep. Clarke Tucker, the Little Rock Democrat, has posted on Facebook some good news —he's cancer-free and has a good prognosis after August surgery and chemotherapy for bladder cancer.

It has fast become gospel around here that if Bielema's staring at a smaller number on the scoreboard as he saunters into the locker room at the midway point of a game, there's no credible reason for Arkansas to take the field for the last 30 minutes of action.